Mortis, the debut EP from Vancouver’s LORD WROUGHT is a gut punch of blackened hardcore, woven with rage, sorrow, and a visceral, personal depth. Dropping today, it draws sonic lines with bands like CURSED, CONVERGE, and THE SECRET, but layers a raw vulnerability unique to the duo.
The EP spans six relentless tracks, each twisting the listener through the themes of loss, addiction, and the unsettling presence of violence that cuts through their soundscape. LORD WROUGHT’s lyrics don’t shy away from the darker personal battles; the writing on Mortis strips bare the human spirit and the struggle to reconcile it with the decay of a broken world.
With Jesse Gander and Stu McKillop at the controls at Rain City Recorders, Mortis represents both a sonic breakthrough and a deeply symbolic moment for LORD WROUGHT. Working with Gander was, for the band, an encounter with their roots in Vancouver’s hardcore scene.
Vocalist Sky remembers, “There was a moment… we were talking about the history of Vancouver’s punk and hardcore scene, and our drummer, Jono, pointed at Jesse and said ‘that’s the singer for d.b.s.’ My brain short-circuited when I realized I’d be performing in front of a childhood hero.”
These tracks feel like an homage to that scene, reinterpreted through LORD WROUGHT’s bleak, distorted lens. Yet, this EP also marks a shift—after parting ways with drummer Jono post-recording, LORD WROUGHT brought in Aijaz and Israel of FILIGREE SILVER GOD, an addition Sky describes as “a fresh start,” capturing LORD WROUGHT’s continued evolution within the Yetzer Hara Records family.
Mortis covers deeply personal terrain, and each track builds on this intensity. The distorted artwork, a digital interpretation inspired by extreme album visuals like PIG DESTROYER’s Terrifyer and CONVERGE’s Jane Doe, reflects this rawness. “I wanted to do something inspired by the xeroxed mixed media pieces of artists like Jacob Bannon and Chris Crude,” Sky explains.
They worked closely with the artist, Art, to create cover variants, with each version translating the motif of a distorted figure—visually resonant with the EP’s themes of human fragmentation and reassembly.
Their influences stretch across genres, with an interlude, The Wailing, that is drenched in inspiration from FALL OF EFRAFA, GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, and the eerie textures of CURRENT 93. Featuring a haunting violin from their collaborator JT, the track samples a monologue from Inland Empire, lending a cinematic depth that disrupts the otherwise relentless hardcore momentum of the EP.
There’s a weight to every track on Mortis, with The Gnashing of Teeth standing out as both an early LORD WROUGHT composition and a meditation on addiction and intergenerational trauma. “This was technically the first Lord Wrought song,” Sky reflects, describing its decade-long evolution and its significance as a turning point. The song pairs thematically with Juniper, where themes of self-destruction meet the urge to overcome—the glimmer of hope flickering, albeit faintly, through the brutality.
Mortis is a bruising expressiourvn of sival, fueled by the bleak realities of life and the hope in rebuilding oneself.
For a more intense dive into the meaning and weight behind each track, check out our full track-by-track commentary, which includes LORD WROUGHT’s own words, pulling apart each layer of the EP.
Plague Intro // Severed Connections:
We wrote “Severed Connections” around the same time we started cannibalizing the “Plague Bearers” breakdown (the closing track on our “…To Be Forgotten” demo) for the beginning of our set and so it became our default set opener; the two have been inseparable ever since.
Thematically, it also creates a nice through line between the demo and the EP. The altered lyrics on “Plague Intro” serve as a solid thesis statement for the rest of the project as well. “Severed Connections” continues those themes and acts as a pretty direct takedown of the type of person who survives by burning bridge after bridge, disregarding the human wreckage in their wake. It was also the most collaborative song in terms of writing process and it’s probably my overall favorite.
Scaleless:
Lyrically, I decided to drop a lot of my more flowery poetic tendencies for this release. I love my typical extreme music lyrical tropes (“backstabbing coward” hardcore, “the sky is black, I wanna die” black metal, “your government hates you” punk), but what I really love are lyrics that are so viscerally personal that they make you feel a bit sickly.
The lyrics on our “…To Be Forgotten” demo were written in just a week or two and I ended up obfuscating a lot of the themes in that batch of songs. Basically, I didn’t feel confident in being as lyrically vulnerable at the time, but there’s a lot of confrontational power in being vulnerable. This used to be a hard one to sing, but now it’s deeply affirming and healing in a way.
Juniper:
One of the songs that sold me on straight edge as a concept in my early teen years was “Bostons” by Have Heart. It’s a classic for a reason and I’ve always wanted to write something in a similar vein. That said, I’m a relatively sardonic intersex woman and the bottle bit me pretty hard at a time so my perspective’s a little different from Pat Flynn’s. I originally wrote this track for a beatdown project that never was, but the addition of a very Brutal Truth intro and a d-beat bridge (courtesy of our previous drummer Jono) made it a much better fit for Lord Wrought.
The Wailing (Interlude):
Our guitarist Skyler was inspired by bands like Fall of Efrafa, Godspeed! You Black Emperor and The Body Lovers/The Body Haters for this instrumental and I was really inspired by Current 93 and Coil for all the textures underneath it. We sampled my favorite monologue from “Inland Empire” and our friend and collaborator JT added some beautifully haunting violin to round out the piece.
The Gnashing of Teeth:
This was technically the first Lord Wrought song and I’m ecstatic that it found a home on this EP with Jesse’s engineering and Stu’s and mastering no less! I wrote the music for this one some time in mid to late highschool and it’s certainly evolved since, but the foundations of it were laid down nearly a decade ago. Sky and I even tried to fit it into another project around 3 years ago! It’s very much so tied in to Juniper lyrically as it explores similar themes of intergenerational trauma and addiction, but it’s a little more optimistic in its rejection of substance abuse. There’s almost a little glimmer of light! Almost!
Drop The Curtain // Pull The String:
What better way to end a project than with a song about sleeping? Or more accurately not sleeping. Sky and I both struggle with sleep disturbances like sleep paralysis and night terrors, so it’s a topic that comes up a lot when writing. Drop The Curtain is equally about imposter syndrome and a recurring nightmare I had growing up about burning alive. There’s some pretty unsubtle tongue in cheek wordplay towards the end of the breakdown about being gay. At the end of the day you gotta at least try to laugh at all the horrendous shit life puts you through.
